Sitting in a coffee shop called Monkey Nest while sipping on Earl Grey and judging everyone around me. I'm sure I am being judged as well, considering how sweaty I am from walking here.
I was surprised after walking outside that it was as humid as it is today. I haven't really felt something like this since Illinois, so it has a odd sense of memories trickling in and walks from years ago.
I walk these days more out of enjoyment and exploration of the city, but it wasn't always that way. Traveling around as a child meant getting some miles in. I used to walk quite a distance to school, as well as bike on other days. I need to check on Google maps sometime, but I think the distance turns out to be about 3 miles in one direction, which meant that if I missed the bus I had a ton of walking to do. It used to be just me, by myself around age 7 or 8. When my brothers and sister were able to join me, it would be the four of us all walking in a line on the way there. I don't know if that is how I picked up my fast pace while walking, but I like to think that it was.
We used to walk 4 miles round trip to summer camp one summer, my siblings and I. We had out day planned out during that summer. We would wake up, hang around the house eating breakfast then lunch. We would watch back to back episodes of American Gladiators on the USA network. After that, we walked over to our elementary school where camp took place. Camp was from noon until five, and I forget if my parents would pick us up or if we would walk back.
Camp was great, as it was a mix of kids from the local schools all getting together, divided by age groups. I was in my own since I was the oldest in the family. My counselor was Steve, and we used to joke about him and the next grade level counselor getting together. I remember her beaming about it one day, but I don't think anything became of it. If it did, I didn't notice. That was the summer I met Clare, the first girl who got me to do those nervous, teenage boy giggles. I think our being together lasted something like 3 days. I remember we went to an ice cream shop, the whole group from camp, and I had some delicious sherbet ice cream. I forget the name of the shop, but I did win a free ice cream cone from it for doing something.
My big thing about camp that summer was that the Lion King was coming out or had come out. I protested it, because I felt Disney was releasing too many movies at the time and that they should stop. The radio blasted Elton John's Can You Feel The Love Tonight and I didn't like it on principle. At the end of camp, there was a special prize drawing. There was a Lion King soundtrack. The counselor drew the winning ticket with the lucky camp goer's name on it, and she smiled big and wide as she said my name. I felt everyone look at me and I know I had a look of horror on my face.
Wait a minute, that's how I got the free ice cream! I ended up trading someone else, some girl who was heads over tails for the movie, her free ice cream cone for the soundtrack. I never redeemed that ice cream cone ticket, so I think I won in the trade at the end of the day.
For years after moving to Normal I would pine over that summer, over my friends back in Belleville. Sixth grade was fun, seventh started out just as interesting, and the move to BloNo hit me like a truck. I didn't recover for a while after that.
That was my life over 20 years ago. I grew sick of moving after that, or I had done it enough that I built up a tolerance for it. Bouncing around from home to home and from school to school was just the routine, expected, unsurprising. Maybe that is why I am OK with people floating in and out of my life so much, it just becomes expected. I like to think that it means I know the routine in how to make friends and people. Maybe that who time growing up like that prepared me for the big move to Austin. Or maybe it is training for something later in life. The mind wonders, and possibilities are pondered.
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